


Freezer Burn: the short stuff

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Freezer Burn [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Food, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:41:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1) the beginnings of Codename Pandora<br/>2) Codename Pandora: the introduction of Sam Wilson<br/>3) Miranda Tung in Codename Pandora<br/>4) Steve's hipster tendencies (aka The Pickles Story)<br/>5) The recruitment of Miranda Tung<br/>6) Chinese New Year as occupational therapy</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Codename Pandora: Harbinger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of Codename: Pandora, the story I still am not writing.

The doorbell rang, startling Steve a little and he pulled the pen away from the paper in an exaggerated motion before setting it down. He didn’t like inking; it wasn’t his strong suit and he hated the way he wasn’t able to preserve all of the nuances he’d created in pencil, instead flattening them out like a drunk joyriding a steamroller.

He moved through the house on quiet feet; he didn’t need to anymore, it was just him now, but breaking that habit would require him to fully face why it was no longer necessary and he wasn’t quite prepared to do that yet. A glimpse through the peephole revealed Bucky, ragged and exhausted, and he opened the door. “What happened to you?”

"Sorry to bother you so late," Bucky began, running his hand through his hair and wincing a little. Not like he was in pain, but like he needed something and wasn’t sure he could explain why, wasn’t happy to have to ask for it but knew he needed to. Once upon a time it would have been for Steve. Now, now it could be anything but probably had to do with Natasha.

"I was working," Steve replied before Bucky could start shutting down. He led Bucky into the kitchen and looked at the oven clock as he picked up the kettle to fill it with water: 2:25. "I hadn’t even realized it was late."

He waited while Bucky sat heavily at the kitchen table and closed his eyes.

"Natasha’s missing," Bucky said as he opened them. "SHIELD won’t admit it, but she is."

As Steve spooned tea into the pot, Bucky spilled out less a tale than a string of facts, some of which were actual facts and some of which were conjectures that could pass as facts and some that only qualified if the assumption that Bucky was right was taken as a given. Steve listened, organizing Bucky’s thoughts in his own head, putting aside the faith of a brother and the trust of a brother-in-arms, and waited for Bucky to still.

"Why do you think SHIELD is lying about it?" Steve asked, since that was the root of things. "OPSEC or something else?"

Bucky raised his left arm with a sour expression. “Do they distinguish when it comes to me?”

Steve ignored the comment, mostly because they’d had this discussion a dozen times already. “Are you her next-of-kin or medical proxy or is it still Clint?”

He and Natasha had once had a conversation about that, about whether Clint would be hurt by such a move or whether Bucky would accept it. Steve had told her that Clint’s love for her did not need a bureaucratic form as proof of reciprocity any more than his and Bucky’s did. Family was family.

"I don’t know," Bucky admitted with a frown. "Probably Clint. But he’d have told me if she were hurt or dead… if he even _knows_.”


	2. Codename Pandora: The Falcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam Wilson in the Freezer Burn universe.

"Does he need a hospital or can we get by with a first aid kit and a toolbox?" Clint asked as he drove. "If we need to steal supplies from somewhere, this is the place."

Annandale had plenty of storefront clinics and medical practices and didn’t have the kind of complicated security that went with high-crime neighborhoods.

"He might need blood," Steve said from the backseat, where he was cradling Bucky halfway in his lap. "It’s hard to tell."

Because Bucky was covered in blood, he didn’t need to say, and how much of it was his and how much he’d left behind in the factory they’d helped him escape from wasn’t clear.

"Don’t," Bucky piped up weakly, his voice slurring on even that.

Clint stopped at the stop sign, like any law-abiding driver. Making a getaway in a regular civilian vehicle through a residential neighborhood wasn’t hard, but it required patience and nerves because you had to keep to the speed limit, obey the signs, and look like any other car on the road because ‘hiding in plain sight’ was the only option. They didn’t have enough ammo to survive a gunfight and the CRV wasn’t exactly up-armored.

"Don’t what?" Steve asked sharply and Clint could hear the frustration and the fear as he accelerated slowly through the intersection. Steve was pissed at Bucky for running off half-cocked and justifiably rattled at the condition they’d found him in.

"Don’t need blood," Bucky said, the words coming out more clearly this time. "Not mine. Mostly."

"I’ll believe it when I see it," Steve retorted.

They’d gotten Bucky free partially because the man had been halfway to liberating himself — keeping the Winter Soldier prisoner was a lot harder when he was conscious — and mostly because Corrales knew all of Rumslow’s moves.

"Brock’s fierce, man," Corrales had said during the planning. "But he’s predictable. Always runs the same few plays. It usually doesn’t matter because he’s so ferocious and the people he’s up against don’t get a second chance. But if you knew his moves, he was pretty easy to take down in training exercises."

This hadn’t been a training exercise; it had been a straight-up battle and Clint was grateful that they’d survived intact. It hadn’t been any kind of victory, just a preservation of the status quo ante, which under the circumstances should probably have been granted honorary victory status, but he was still too amped up to be gracious like that.

  
"If he’s not gonna croak between here and the District, I know a guy we can go to," Clint said as he signaled his right turn. "Good guy and he owes me one."

Bucky made a noise of disagreement — or maybe pain — but Steve drowned him out. “This is a bigger favor than borrowing bootlaces.”

There were capture-or-kill orders out on both Clint and Bucky and he had no doubt that there’d be a BOLO out with a picture of what Steve looked like with the image inducer — if there wasn’t one already. The hunt for them would be delicate — they were men of the shadows and their enemies wanted them to _stay_ in the shadows — but that didn’t mean that the people chasing them didn’t know how to hunt in the dark.

"He owes me for more than bootlaces," Clint said, but he also knew what Steve wasn’t saying. "He’s a good man. He’s not caught up in this. We can trust him."

It was twenty minutes later when Clint pulled in and parallel parked on a quiet residential street. “Stay here,” Clint told the senior citizens in the back seat. “I’ll be back in five.”

He waited for Steve to check the Sig Sauer he was holding — Bucky’s weapon — before closing the door and setting the alarm like anyone else would. He walked the two blocks to Sam’s place in an indirect route to allow him to check for tails — and any early risers — before returning to the car and helping Steve get Bucky out of the backseat. Bucky was clearly favoring his prosthetic arm, which was either good news or not — they knew fuck-all about fixing it if it was broken, but at least it could be taken off, unlike any other limb that might be damaged.

Clint held his own pistol cocked and ready as he led them back to Sam’s place. The moon was hidden by clouds, but there was a streetlight and Steve stood with Bucky under a tree to hide in its shadow as Clint went up to the front door and rang the bell twice.

Considering that it was four in the morning and Sam hadn’t seen Clint in eight years, Sam was relatively unsurprised to see him.

"I need to call in my marker," Clint said with a shrug. "Me and a couple of friends are in the shit and I need a guy with a toolbox and a first-aid kit."

Sam scratched his belly and sighed as he held open the screen door. “Lemme go put on some pants.”


	3. Codename: Pandora - Gilded Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miranda's reserve of courage is more than replenished.

"I’ll do it."

"Miranda!" Steve began loudly, earning looks from across the room, then remembered himself and continued on in a quieter voice. "You don’t need to do this. You’re doing plenty here."

She frowned at him. “I’m sitting comfy and safe in Stark Tower swimming laps in the penthouse pool, being fed gourmet meals, and occasionally serving as information clearinghouse. Which, by the way, JARVIS could probably do just fine on his own.”

Which wasn’t precisely true; for all of JARVIS’s omniscience within the Tower and master of the electronic world without, he wasn’t quite ready to go all Skynet and declare humanity irrelevant. But it was close enough. She’d more than recovered from her flight from SHIELD, from the physical and emotional strain of having to relive her worst days since she’d been rescued from HYDRA after her cover had been blown. And if the nightmares weren’t quite as gone as the bruises, well, nobody here could say they were any better.

Steve smiled at her, the sharp, amused smile that had never been part of Captain America’s repertoire, only Steve’s. “You don’t believe that,” he pointed out. “You know that you’ve been a real help, that you’re not just sitting here in some kind of gilded cage.”

She wasn’t, but she could be doing more than she was and this, this was something she could do. “Do you remember what you told me when I came to you all freaked out after the Triple Bombings? You told me that my lifetime allotment of courage wasn’t used up, that when I needed it, it would be there. Well, I need it because _you_ need it. So put your money where your mouth is and have a little faith in me.”

Steve shook his head, bemused that she was trying to guilt him into letting her run off into danger the way she used to guilt him into getting past his frustration during his rehab. “I have all the faith in the world in you, Miss Tung. I couldn’t otherwise. I just don’t want you doing anything because you feel like you need to earn your keep or that you owe anyone.”

It was her turn to give him a pointed look because both of them had very long lists of people they owed, including each other. Steve met her gaze evenly and she could see the concern, but also the strain. The last year had been hard on him - the last few years if they went back to the shooting or even to finding out about the Winter Soldier - and then his world had been turned topsy-turvy once more before he’d recovered from the last upheaval. Before he’d been running for his life, he’d been mourning Peggy’s death and the grief still clung to him, fresher now than it had been because of what he was running from: the utter destruction of what Peggy had spent her life putting together.

"This is something that needs doing and I can do it," she said, keeping his eyes on hers. "Who else were y’all going to send? Pepper? Clint in a dress?"

The dead drop to be used was in a ladies’ room in Hudson River Park; there’d been jokes about who’d look best in drag, but it was a problem. They’d broken up their strategy session with the vague idea of finding a Parks Department uniform and a maintenance cart, but they’d known that even if they could grab the outfit and trolley, it would still look strange if a man went into the women’s bathroom to clean.

"Actually, I was hoping Hill would get back in time," Steve admitted with a tiny shrug. And then he yawned. "Sorry."

The guys had shown up exhausted and then there’d been all of the briefings and planning sessions and while there’d been a break for dinner, there hadn’t been a break to rest. Clint had fallen asleep on the sofa in the middle of the conversation on getting into the Triskelion and even Bucky had given up and gone off to a bedroom about half an hour ago. Sam, the newbie, was still downstairs with Tony designing some kind of jet-powered hang glider that had had both of them talking a mile a minute at ever-increasing volumes - waking up Clint - until Pepper had told them to go down to the workroom.

She rolled her eyes and gestured toward the elevator. “Go get some sleep.”

Steve surprised her by leaning down to kiss her forehead after he stood up. “Goodnight.”

Miranda didn’t watch him go, instead heading out to the balcony where Pepper had gone after everyone else had either left or headed off to bed. She was sitting in one of the lounge chairs, a glass of white wine on the table next to her perspiring in the humidity, with a keyboard-wearing tablet on the lap tray.

"Did he agree or did he just do that thing where he failed to say no but managed to convey his disagreement nonetheless?" Pepper asked, not looking up from where she was working. The world was collapsing around them, but it was also a strangely private apocalypse and Stark Industries had to - _had_ to - stay apart from the chaos and survive.

"Oh, he conveyed his disagreement quite thoroughly," Miranda assured as she dropped down into the other lounger. "But if he thinks that the Captain America Frown of Disapproval is going to work on me at this late date, he’s going to be sadly disappointed."

In the years since Captain America had carried her off an African island to safety, she had seen Steve laugh, cry, dance Peggy around his kitchen because the mood struck him, throw temper tantrums out of frustration, draw obscene doodles of his friends, and drool after falling asleep on Bucky’s metal shoulder. There wasn’t much of the Captain America mystique left for her, which she knew he considered a good thing, but it was going to be a lot less welcome tomorrow when he couldn’t change her mind by going full Cap on her.

"Just beware of the Captain America Dewy Eyes of Entreaty," Pepper replied, pausing in her typing to take a sip of wine. "I think he picked that one up from his starlets, which makes the extra dash of innocence all the more counter-intuitive. And yet it’s so oddly effective. Wine bucket’s over there, if you’re interested."

She was a little interested, but not enough to get up off the lounger.

The following morning, she had an unexpected ally in her campaign to retrieve the contents of the dead drop.

"Why not?" Bucky asked after Steve once again expressed doubt. A night’s sleep had done him wonders, as had whatever Tony had done to his arm yesterday. The worst of his injuries had long since faded to invisibility, but he’d been as worn as everyone else and Bucky, raw with exhaustion, was both heartbreaking and more than a little scary. Today, though, he was a passing approximation to his old self, subdued from his pain but willing to throw grapes at Steve when the latter had teased him about finally finding a razor to shave. And willing to go up against Steve when it came to letting Miranda out into the field. "She’s field-capable and it’ll be a lot easier than getting Clint into one of Miz Potts’s dresses."

"I thought we had agreed to drop the drag element," Clint said plaintively as he piled his plate high with watermelon and pineapple. He handed the plate to Miranda, who took fruit and passed it down.

"You do have the figure for it," Tony offered. "Although not Pepper’s dresses. You’d probably be more of a Vivienne Westwood girl and I don’t think Pep owns any of hers anymore."

"Siriano," Pepper offered, smiling at Marcel, who was bringing out another round of stuffed french toast. "He could pull of Christian Siriano with aplomb and I have a few of his, but from the pre-fall collection and this is definitely a resort occasion."

The conversation was wrangled back to the matter at hand, at which point Steve lost resoundingly because Miranda had _thought_ about this.

"I know how to disguise myself in plain sight, Steve," she reminded him. Once upon a time, Natasha had walked her through likely escapes - from the Helicarrier when it had been docked in the harbor, from the SHIELD building on 44th Street once she’d moved there, from her apartment in Flushing. The common element had been to take advantage of New York City’s demographics and hide in a sea of Chinese faces just like hers. ("Or Asian faces," Natasha had added. "Most westerners can’t easily tell Koreans from Chinese from Japanese. Koreatown will hide you just fine.") "I’ve kind of been doing it since you brought me back."

Which was how she found herself in a Conway on Steinway Street in Queens, picking out clothes that made her look off-the-boat instead of off-the-rack at Ann Taylor. A pale yellow short-sleeve shirt with ribbons attached and a white skirt with red and pink polka dots was the winning combination; she also picked out a pair of sunglasses that did not fit her face and a package of bobby socks, cheap sneakers, and one of the purses piled in the $5 bin.

Two days later, carrying a Chinese-language guidebook and with Bucky as a close tail - the compromise with Steve - she walked west on 14th Street with a multitool and a .22 in her $5 purse, ready to break into a toilet paper dispenser.


	4. In a Pickle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint strongly objects to Steve's latest food project.

"No. Just no." 

"Why not?" Steve asked, more curious than defiant as he dumped the rest of the veggies into the sink he'd filled with water. 

"Because the line between you and the hipster poseurs you are surrounded by becomes very thin indeed if you start pickling stuff you get at the farmer's market," Clint explained with exasperation. "I am speaking up for your own good here. This is a border that must stand. I will be the sniper in the guard tower if I have to be." 

Steve looked over at Natasha, who sipped at her wine and shrugged her shoulders. She wasn't sure if he was looking for help or to verify that this was, in fact, what Clint was getting worked up about. Possibly both. "I think Hipster Captain America could be the hero for a new generation."

Clint glared at her. "Yes, he can lose his razor, rework his uniform with a plaid print and American Apparel pants, and have The National do a remix of 'The Star Spangled Man.'"

Steve started scrubbing kirbies and placing them in the colander in the other half of the double sink. "Just because hipsters do it doesn't mean it's a hipster thing," he said as he worked. "I'm not doing it to be cool. I'm doing it because they were three pounds for a dollar."

"Why did you do that anyway?" Clint asked. "Who needs three pounds of cucumbers? I know you lived through the Depression, but speaking as one poor boy-made-good to another, just because it's cheap doesn't make it a bargain -- or a necessity. Especially in our line of work. We could get called out any minute for some crazy mission."

Steve finished what he was doing and wiped his hands on a dish towel before picking up his beer bottle. "Preservation is the point of pickling, Clint." He took a long sip, but Natasha could see him smiling as he did so. "Well, that and tastiness."

Clint put his face down on his arms and groaned into the countertop before picking his head up. "Promise me one thing: nobody is getting a jar of homemade pickles from you for Christmas."

Steve held up his hand. "Scout's honor." 

"You were never a scout and that's the Vulcan salute, Chorus Boy," Clint retorted, gesturing at Steve's hand with his own beer bottle. 

The kitchen timer rang a moment later, before Clint could explain what he was talking about, and the matter was dropped because Steve was pulling homemade pizzas out of the oven. 

A week or so later, Natasha was in Bern chasing down a (hopeless, futile) lead on the Winter Soldier when she got a email from Clint with "this is ALL YOUR FAULT" in the subject header. Inside the body was an attachment of a sketch done in colored pencils of Hipster Captain America, who in truth looked a lot more like Steve had before the serum. He had skinny legs ending in chunky boots and the uniform top's stars and stripes were transformed into a red-and-blue plaid. He had artfully mussed hair and a little bit of stubble and thick plastic-framed glasses with the shield logo on the arms. "Truth, Liberty, and Pabst Blue Ribbon!" was coming out of a speech bubble. 

"I think it's adorable," Natasha emailed back.

"I am unfriending you both," Clint replied the next day because he was somewhere that might be Sudan and free time was at a premium. It would have been a bigger threat if any of them had had Facebook. 

They were both at Steve's a few days later, however, testing out the first of the batches of pickles. 


	5. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miranda Tung's recruitment into SHIELD.

The path to becoming a SHIELD mole in HYDRA began with a posting on the USAJobs website.

The job did not, on the face of it, sound promising. Boring-sounding government agency offering an unimpressive salary to work in one of a few unimpressive locations (Bozeman, Eau Claire, Abilene) doing what did not promise to be interesting work, although they required fluency in one of several languages not taught in most American high schools.

Chinese was on the list, which was why Miranda filled out the online application, attached her resume, burped out a cover letter explaining why she’d be perfect for the position, and chose Eau Claire as her first choice of location because it sounded the least dusty. She didn’t know that she’d take the job if it were offered to her — it sounded an awful lot like what she was doing in Core Health’s data entry department, just in two languages and with a lot more snow. But it also sounded like a job she might actually get instead of the long-shots she’d been taking so far and it would be nice to have a win. Spending her days in a basement doing medical data processing was not what she’d thought her future would hold when she’d graduated with an English Lit degree last year. Although maybe she should have; her BFF Kinsey’s parents had only “allowed” her to major in English Lit because she had been pre-law.

She heard nothing about the job for a while and forgot about it, mentally filing it with all of the other pie-in-the-sky jobs she’d sought and not gotten. And then suddenly, six weeks later, she got an email offering an interview in Raleigh the following Tuesday.

In hindsight, she was pretty glad she hadn’t known she was meeting the Black Widow at the time.

The interview started off normally and then quickly veered off into several odd directions, questions about her politics and family still in China - the former, Miranda was pretty sure, not supposed to happen. She was asked if she gave to charity and what she’d heard about HYDRA, which wasn’t much of anything besides that they’d apparently taken over Detroit and a lot of people had died finding that out. The question after that was about the Duke-UNC-Chapel Hill game the previous week and the whiplash must’ve been visible on her face because Ms. King smiled, a sharp smile that had nothing to do with being amused.

"At what point did you realize that this wasn’t what you thought it was?" she asked.

Miranda blinked. “I got nervous when you asked me about what party I was registered to vote with,” she admitted after a long pause and a firm grip on the table edge. “But that could have been you being inappropriate.”

She wasn’t scared, not precisely, but she was wary. Greensboro wasn’t a backwater and she hadn’t led a completely sheltered life, but she felt out of her depth and a little taken advantage of and a lot naive and very young. And maybe a little scared. 

"When should I have smelled a rat?" she asked when Ms. King said nothing.

"A pro would have gotten curious the minute they saw me," Ms. King replied, a kindness in her voice that did not completely counteract her words and what they meant. "People who look like me don’t have low-level government jobs outside of romance novels and Hollywood. I’m sure there’s a strikingly beautiful woman in some G-4 position somewhere, but she won’t be there for long. Stereotypes should never be relied on, but they usually have a basis in fact.

"But you’re not a pro and you did fine. Better than fine, which is why we are having this part of the discussion."

This part of the discussion was no less shocking or terrifying for being straightforward. Ms. King — call me Natalie — was looking for candidates to infiltrate HYDRA on behalf of SHIELD, a paramilitary spy agency that turned out to be the true bosses of Captain America and the other Heroes of New York. (“Even Iron Man?” “Even him, although he likes to think otherwise.”)

It was all very dizzying and Natalie seemed to recognize that, taking her time and using small words to detail why Miranda was exactly who they wanted and perfect for the job despite not being perfect for any other job besides data entry.

"Your lack of direction, to be blunt, is exactly what would make HYDRA appealing to you," she explained over a lunch ordered in from Biscuitville. Comfort for her, Miranda suspected, because women who looked like Natalie didn’t chow down on fried okra and southern fried catfish on their own.

"If I were interested in following neo-Nazis," Miranda retorted hotly, upset at the words for more than it just made her lack of success real for being spoken aloud by a stranger. "I’m more likely to be chased by the Klan than joining them."

HYDRA wasn’t a neo-Nazi organization, Natalie explained. They were using some of the iconography and infrastructure, to be sure, and that could not be coincidental. But the fact of it was that they were using a different ideological basis entirely, one that seemed to have a much greater appeal in Third World and Emerging nations. To the point that the organization was, if not majority minority on the foot-soldier level, then getting close to it.

"That’s why you were looking for the languages you did," Miranda realized out loud. The job posting had listed fluency in one of Arabic, Urdu, Swahili, Chinese, Hindi, and Russian as necessary requirements.

She was rewarded by a smile from Natalie.

What SHIELD wanted and what Natalie had been sent to see if Miranda would supply was information from within HYDRA. Not James Bond hanging from the ceiling taking pictures kind of stuff, but day-to-day kind of things, which was why they were looking for civilians like Miranda instead of sending spies like Natalie.

"We need to see how they attract people and how they use them," Natalie explained. "We don’t know how they’re recruiting or how well they’re retaining. We don’t know what a typical HYDRA member does during the day, how they’re used, what kind of freedoms they have, what kind of instruction they get, what kind of discipline they’re under."

By the end of the day, Miranda was surprised to find herself comfortable with SHIELD’s expectations and her own ability to meet them. She said as much and Natalie held up her hand to stop her.

"You are not allowed to make a decision today," Natalie told her firmly. "Because of what I have been going to some pains to not emphasize: this has a reasonable chance of getting you killed."

Miranda sat back. She hadn’t forgotten that Natalie was asking her to infiltrate an organization that had more weapons than most countries and had already killed more than two dozen people that they knew about, but she’d focused instead on the basic tasks Natalie had explained as what they were looking for. Lower reward than anything acquired by hanging from the ceiling taking pictures, but lower risk, too. But not no risk.

"Whatever this new HYDRA turns out to be, however much they believe their own hype about making the world a better place, they will not react well to a spy in their midst," Natalie went on when Miranda met her eyes again. "We will try to keep you safe, but we can’t guarantee it. You’ll be on your own — really on your own — for almost all of it. And if you do call for help, we might not make it there in time. And you may suffer for that."

Natalie told her to take a week to think about it, to not discuss the particulars with anyone no matter what her answer turned out to be, and that she’d be in touch.

A week later, after a lot of thought, some internet research, and some very oblique conversations with her parents and her friends, she accepted that she hadn’t changed her mind. This was something she could do and, perhaps, should do. It could end badly, but so could a lot of other things worth doing that needed doing: being a soldier, being a fireman, being a cop. And staying behind didn’t guarantee safety. She could get hit by a drunk-driver crossing the street on a Friday night. Or she could live to a ripe old age after working thirty years doing data processing for Core Health.

Or she could have a tiny part in helping to save the world.


	6. Gong Xi Fa Cai

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chinese New Year as therapy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during [_Revenant_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1024456), although reading that is not required for reading this.

Steve was in a mood when Miranda got to Stark Tower a little before lunch. It happened sometimes, usually after a PT session in which he'd tried to do too much and failed. But sometimes he was just distracted and snappish for no apparent reason and she'd learned to roll with it, to accept it without catering to it. Both Peggy and the therapist had told her not to take it personally, that sometimes Steve really couldn't contain his feelings and that, oddly enough, was for the best. And it was kind of a mark of respect that he acted out in front of her and didn't pretend to be his old self like he was still on stage. Which was sometimes more an honor in theory and less in practice -- Steve's occasional emotional constipation had been a choice, more or less, and that he didn't get to make that choice all of the time now wasn't any kind of victory for her. 

But sometimes he was just mopey and self-pitying that, Peggy and Bucky had made it very clear, nobody had to put up with. 

Which was why the easiest way to tell what kind of mood Steve was in was to see what kind of mood Peggy was in. Because if she was ignoring him entirely, he was in a sulk. But if she was being gentle with him or teasing him, he'd had a rough morning. 

Today was the latter, since Peggy was in the window seat with her tablet reading movie reviews out loud, delighting in the put-downs and insults the critics had to offer for Sean Penn's latest Oscar bait. Steve was at the kitchen table working on his bowl of clay fruit, rolling a ball of clay over textured silicone to make orange skin -- he was saving the bananas for last because he didn't want to deal with the dick jokes -- but there might as well have been a cartoon storm cloud over his head. 

"So," Miranda said by way of greeting. "How about lunch?" 

Steve got up without hesitation to join her at the counter, but without real enthusiasm. If he'd been in a sulk, she'd have been a little more demanding of him, but as it was, she gave him vegetables to wash and didn't ask him to do too much fine work. His bilateral coordination was sometimes a little off after he'd overdone it in PT, but washing veggies covered up the worst of it. He'd more or less mastered his own strength by the time she'd been brought in -- which didn't mean that there wasn't the occasional broken glass or bruised fruit from gripping too hard, just that it wasn't a regular event the way simply dropping things or needing to sit down could be. 

"So I was thinking we could do something for Chinese New Year coming up," she said as a way to fill the time until Steve, on carrot-peeling duty, could catch up to her slicing. She'd brought the big carrots from Flushing, not the little bagged supermarket kind, so they'd be easier for him to grip. They had more surface area, but he peeled them faster than the little ones for the same reason he got better results with the thick-handled flatware. She'd mostly addressed Peggy, in part because Steve didn't need the distraction of having to answer and mostly because he was far more likely to dismiss the idea out of hand if he was having a rough day. "Make some dumplings, some turnip cake, stuff like that."

Peggy smiled mischievously. "Will there be a sequel to the Great Noodle Experiment?"

Steve, still working on the second carrot, made a plaintive noise that could only indicate that he hoped the answer was 'no.' 

"Hush," Peggy told him, waving his opposition away with a careless gesture. "I'm rather looking forward to a reprise."

The Great Noodle Experiment had been to answer the question "How Many Avengers Does It Take to Make _Lamian_?" To which the result was "more than we currently have" because it had been a hilarious, messy failure that ended with noodle dough hanging from the light fixture and bits and pieces being found for weeks afterward despite the thoroughness of the cleaning staff. This had been after much youtube video watching and even an in-person demonstration by the guy from Li's Lanzhou Hand Stretched Noodles, who'd been the only reason there'd been anything recognizable to be used for the soup.

"We can do noodles," Miranda allowed with a smile, accepting the second carrot from Steve. "Long noodles are for long lives."

"I shall eat my fill, then," Peggy said. "And the dumplings and turnip cake, which you'll forgive me sounds like something we had to eat during war rationing."

"This one's got a bit more pig and stuff in it," Miranda said as she sliced up the second carrot. "And you fry the slices. And we can watch Steve grate turnips until his arms fall off."

"Well, that makes it much less dreary-sounding," Peggy agreed, giving Steve a speculative look. "We'll have to make sure you're appropriately clad for maximum effect. Maybe the dark blue shirt you're so fond of?"

"That _everyone_ 's so fond of," Miranda corrected because it was true. Candice-the-physical-therapist always smiled when he turned up wearing it and Tony joked that Pepper tapped into the gym's video feed for dark blue t-shirt days. Although, to be fair, most of Steve's workout wardrobe was pretty flattering.

"I remember the days when I wasn't treated like an inanimate object," Steve sighed, handing over the last carrot and reaching for the ginger. "How much?" 

"I don't know, a weak two inches, maybe?" Miranda replied. "The recipe said two tablespoons. And you haven't been treated like an animate object since 1943, so you should be used to it by now."

Once upon a time, she'd been as in awe of Captain America as any other kid who had to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance each morning in school. And that awe had only grown once he'd returned and fought off aliens invading New York. And then rescued her from HYDRA in the middle of an African jungle. But since then, she'd gotten to know _Steve Rogers_ , who was an impressive man by anyone's standards, but still just a man and not an icon, not a warrior of legend or a superhero or whatever else the books used as subtitles. She'd been his friend before he'd gotten shot and she was his friend now, even if that sometimes meant being his occupational therapy buddy first. And friends don't let friends walk into situations ripe for mockery unscathed. 

Steve's tactical genius meant that he was aware that he was outmaneuvered, so he moved on to rinsing and snapping the ends off of the green beans without further comment. Lunch was ginger-carrot soup with string beans thrown in after the pureeing and oaxaca cheese grilled cheese on the challah they'd made yesterday. Steve's fondness for oaxaca cheese was due to Natasha, who'd introduced him (and thus everyone else who ate in his kitchen) to what was essentially a giant ball of string cheese he could manage even on his worst days. But it was tasty string cheese that melted nicely and sometimes pizza was for more than Bad Coordination Days.

She went back over to SHIELD's 44th Street building to do 'real' work after lunch, getting caught up on the files that had been generated in Weinan at the end of their day. Yay, oil prices. Since she'd been given the Shaanxi portfolio at the China Desk, she'd had to learn more than any sane non-engineer would ever need to know about fossil fuels and the aerospace industry and the environmental impact of both. But understandign Shaanxi's high-tech sector had gotten her the gig as liaison advisor to Stark Industries, which in turn was her cover for hanging out with Steve, so she couldn't complain too much. And it was still better than farming or commercial fishing or whatever some of the other provincial specialists had to bone up on.

All of which meant she was figuratively hip-deep in reports about software piracy and gas pipelines when her phone buzzed with a text from Crazy Harry. Who went by Bucky Barnes pretty much everywhere not the phone that Clint had programmed with Muppet names for Avengers-related contacts. And who was informing her that he had been designated her pack mule for her shopping trip, whenever it was. 

It took her a minute -- okay, three minutes -- to figure out what the hell that meant.

Knowing that Captain America was alive and reasonably well and living in Stark Tower was a secret she couldn't share with anyone, even accidentally. So she compartmentalized it away the way she did the fact that she'd once been Operative Baker, SHIELD mole within HYDRA, and she just _didn't think about it_ away from its natural context. Lunch with Steve and Peggy had been four hours ago, but it had been packed and locked away in another mental box entirely by the time she'd gotten to 44th Street and became Agent Tung again. Which meant that four hours could have been four light years for all of the distance she'd tried to put between here and Steve's floor at Stark Tower.

But once she'd figured out what the text was offering -- or not really offering as much as stating; she'd been a part of Steve's inner circle for long enough to appreciate that Bucky was not just going to be just her pack mule, but also her bodyguard -- she had to laugh. She hadn't done any more planning for a New Year's menu than decide that it would be a fun change of pace for them to try some traditional dishes, but Steve -- and, she was sure, Peggy -- had already gotten the ball rolling. It might be just Bucky now, but she was sure that by the end of the week, this would be an Avengers Family Meal. Which in turn meant that she was going to have to come up with an actual plan instead of just free-wheeling it as she'd intended.

Which was how she wound up three weeks later dragging Bucky down Kissena Boulevard toward Chang Jiang Supermarket.

They'd started with lunch at the food court at the New World Mall, but when Bucky asked why they weren't going to the giant supermarket upstairs, she explained that there wasn't anything so much better or cheaper to be worth the utter insanity of J-Mart the week before New Year's.

Bucky looked around with a cock-eyed expression up and down Main Street. "As opposed to the peace and quiet everywhere else?"

Downtown Flushing on a weekend was normally crazy and Downtown Flushing on the weekend before Lunar New Year was a special kind of crazy, but there was special crazy and then there was J-Mart. "Would you go to Macy's at Herald Square the week before Christmas if you didn't have to?"

Chang Jiang was a zoo, but a manageable zoo because she was tiny and her backup/basket-carrier/bodyguard was the Winter Soldier. (Bucky as a rule was not a very scary individual, at least not for her, but she had also never seen him actually _as_ the Winter Soldier and she knew that mattered.) Oranges on the stem, jujubes, gai choy, three napa cabbages, enough Chinese turnips to make Bucky nervous, ginger, scallions, mushrooms, carrots, long beans, two kinds of rice flour, a slab of brown sugar, two kinds of dried sausage, freshly ground pork, more Chinese bacon than they were ever going to need, still-squirming shrimp, tofu, jiaozi wrappers, rice paper, egg noodles, and extra bottles of soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, and rice vinegar because Steve had some but accidents happened. There were also a couple of dragonfruit because she couldn't convince Bucky that they looked better than they tasted, a big bag of haw flakes, and some Pocky because they deserved it and Bucky had somehow never seen it before. And a bigger bamboo steamer than the one Steve currently had.

"You seriously thought that you were going to drag all this stuff back to the Tower on the subway?" Bucky asked as he loaded the last of the red plastic shopping bags into the back seat of the Altima double-parked on Barclay. "Apart from the logistics, it's poor tradecraft."

Going anywhere with Bucky -- or Clint or Natasha or Peggy -- always meant spy lessons. She knew the basics well enough to be instinctive (she varied her departure times and travel routes, she didn't play her headphones very loudly), but she never resented the advanced instruction. 

"There is no disguise as effective as a Chinese woman with a gazillion red shopping bags on the 7 train," she retorted, which was both true and not the point and she made it clear with her expression that she knew it. "I'd have split it up over a few days and gotten more things in Manhattan."

The Pocky was gone by the time they cleared the Midtown Tunnel; Bucky was now (a) a convert and (b) possibly going to buy some for Natasha.

While the actual New Year's celebration was indeed going to be a big Avengers Family gathering, most of the preparation and work was going to be done by Steve because that was why it was happening in the first place. She printed out the recipes and she and Steve planned out how and when everything was going to be made. There was even a spreadsheet!

"Why can't we use the kitchenaid for this?" Steve -- dressed in his dark blue shirt after Peggy had refused to speak to him until he'd gone back and changed -- asked as he adjusted his grip on the daikon. There were three box graters, with Clint manning the third because he'd had the misfortune of stopping by on Turnip-Grating Day. "It has more accessories than Tony's suit."

"Neither the kitchenaid nor Tony's suit need four hours of therapy per day," Peggy called over from her spot by the window. "The suit doesn't list to port when he walks."

"Well, it does after a few drinks," Clint pointed out, pausing in his grating to rotate his veggie. "But the more accurate question is why _I_ can't use the Kitchenaid."

"Because you need more therapy than there are hours in the day," Natasha said as she entered the room carrying a six-pack of bottled soda in one hand and a large bag that smelled like lunch in the other. "I'm going to reheat."

Natasha, unlike Bucky, did very much scare Miranda despite her knowing the Black Widow the longest. (Or maybe _because_.) It wasn't actual fear-of, more a healthy respect and a little bit of the 'there but for the grace of God go I' and a little bit of fear-for. Because Miranda had _been_ undercover, had been someone else for a long time, had lived with the terror of being all alone and too far to help if she'd ever been discovered, and she still had the scars from it. (And the nightmares, and the anxiety, and the lapsed prescription for Klonopin.) But that had been less than a year and Natasha had been doing it her whole life and that she functioned at all, let alone so well... It struck her differently than it did with Bucky, whose personal horrors were both more extreme and less similar to her own.

They were not done grating by the time Natasha had finished re-crisping french fries and re-assembled the warmed-up hamburgers so that the meat was hot and the lettuce still fresh, but they set everything aside to eat. And to give their arms a rest. Miranda didn't think the lunch choice had been one of convenience or whimsy on Natasha's part; these were foods that Steve could handle well even after exerting himself and didn't need silverware for, both of which mattered for both dignity and dietary reasons.

Clint made sure to check the spreadsheet before announcing his next visit, so it was Thor and Jane Foster who were around for Steve's next Labor of Hercules, as he had taken to calling the prep tasks. 

"Maybe it's the trials of Psyche instead," Peggy had suggested.

"Does this mean you'll marry me when I'm done?" Steve had asked and Peggy had glared at him. Miranda went back and forth on whether the two of them were adorable or the greatest tragedy she'd ever witnessed firsthand. 

Thor was intrigued by the traditions involved in the New Year's celebrations, why certain foods were almost mandatory and others practically forbidden, and then the stories behind the dragons and the red envelopes with lucky money -- "We're hoping Tony covers that" -- and Miranda ended up spending more than an hour going over it with him as a kind of comparative mythology seminar. It was actually a lot of fun because Thor seemed to know a lot of stories from a lot of cultures on Earth as well as the other 'realms' he'd visited, although Jane, whom Miranda had only met once before, seemed more interested in the ingredients set out before Steve and what he was mixing. Which was the batter for nian gao and he'd been bitching about it right up until the doorbell had rung despite neither Miranda nor Peggy showing him the slightest bit of pity for not being allowed to break out the paddle attachment on the kitchenaid. But Jane was a new audience and he was renewing his efforts, although in the end it was Thor who helped out and got his hands smelling like almonds for a few days for his efforts. 

Steve enjoyed stir-frying the shrimp and egg noodles much more; he was still limited in what he could and couldn't do around a live flame, so any chance he got, he tended to savor. But the recipe was pretty straight-forward and Miranda did all of the actual adding of ingredients, but Steve manned the wok and held the scoop and smiled as he did so, even after he accidentally sent one shrimp on an express flight to the dining area. 

The team event on New Year's eve turned out to be making dumplings and egg rolls instead of another attempt at hand-pulled noodles; it was more traditional, but it was also less messy. Sort of. Pepper and Bruce turned out to be the best pleaters and Tony, once he got over the belief that the egg rolls were supposed to be the girth of cigars and not beer cans, turned out precise and perfectly edged examples and started bossing everyone else around. Miranda did catch him wordlessly and casually putting a finger down to help Steve maneuver his egg roll back onto the appropriate angle while bitching out Bucky for being a klutz. 

Despite it all, there were plenty of dumplings for midnight, the fried turnip cake slices were a hit, Tony indeed took care of the red envelopes, the nian gao got rave reviews that had Steve smiling, and there were loose plans to do it all again next year. 

"Hey," Steve stopped her as she was packing up the sauteed greens with the leftover shrimp. "Thank you."

Steve, clearly exhausted, had been quiet for the last part of the gathering, sitting next to Peggy on the couch and seemingly content to observe everyone else's antics. But he'd made his way back into the kitchen during the big cleanup, even if it was to sit at the table and watch others do. 

She thought about deferring or pointing out that this had essentially been a really ridiculous therapy exercise for him or that she'd only been a part of a larger plan... but that, she realized, was what he was thanking her for. "You're welcome," she told him, leaning over to kiss his cheek. Which was impulsive and possibly a little champagne-driven and not meant as anything more than just happiness, but she knew he understood. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A notice for this has been posted to tumblr, if you'd like to like or reblog](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/138581937604/fb-drabble-gong-xi-fa-cai)


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